What would be the ideal angle to have solar panels on for the Brisbane area ?.
When I had my system installed I set it up for true north at 30 degrees, after a week of monitoring I found the times here where I get full sun on the panels and got my "Middle of the Day" marker from them, then changed from North to a little east (about 15 degrees). Reason for that was a shadow from my house and next doors tree. After doing that I found I was getting about 2kw a day more power. The next week I changed the angle from 30 degrees to 40 degrees and managed to collect a further 1.5kw for the day.
Last week when we had all the strong winds here the system reached a new peek of 15.5kw for the day, 1kw higher then the average for the past 2 months.
So yesterday I changed the angle back to 30 degrees and at the moment the figures i see are about 10% lower then the past few days. I will leave it run for a week like this just to get a better average for the time of day and total for the day.
I guess the brand of the panels have a small part to play, mine are branded as Solar Fun, just a cheap-o asian brand, most days I get 80% of the max rated power from the panels. Those windy days it went over 90% and the odd cloud edge effect I see 100%+ readings for very short times for the DC levels, the AC levels hover around 95% efficency all day long with the 2.8kw Xantrex Inverter.
Maybe next week I will try a 20 degree angle and see what that does.
Bookmarks